The
concert is a fundraiser for the Kate McGarrigle Fund which supports research
into sarcoma, the form of cancer which claimed Kate’s life in 2010.

The
concert is being curated by Joe Boyd, who produced the first two Kate &
Anna McGarrigle albums in the 1970s and The McGarrigle Hour album in 1998, and
will include performances of Kate’s songs by such family members as Anna and
Jane McGarrigle; Rufus and Martha Wainwright; Dane, Sylvan and Lily Lanken;
longtime friends and musical associates like Chaim Tannenbaum and Joel Zifkin; and a wide
array of artists including, among others, Emmylou Harris, Peggy Seeger, Bruce Cockburn,
Ron Sexsmith, Jane Siberry and Robert Charlebois.

I'm sure it will be a fabulous, poignant evening filled with great songs, laughter and tears.

My
friendship with Kate dates back to the early-1970s. I worked extensively with
Kate and Anna from 1974 to 1980, producing concerts in Montreal and as an agent
arranging concerts at such venues as the National Arts Centre (Ottawa) Convocation
Hall (Toronto) and Carnegie Hall (New York). Later on, I wrote about Kate and
Anna often for such publications as the Montreal Gazette, the National Post and
a major cover feature in Sing Out! magazine. As well, Kate and Anna were my frequent
guests on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio program.

My
remembrance of Kate written just after she passed away is at this link.

Since
then, I’ve also written reviews of Oddities, a collection of Kate and Anna’s previously
unreleased tracks at this link, and Tell My Sister, the 3-CD collection which
includes re-mastered versions of the first two albums – Kate & Anna McGarrigle
and Dancer with Bruised Knees – as well as an absolutely essential collection
of early solo and duo demos at this link.

Friday, June 8, 2012

“This is not a history of the Canadian music
business,” notes Bernie Finkelstein right at the beginning of True North: A Life in the Music Business.
However, both casual readers and those intimately familiar with it will learn
much about the history of the Canadian music business and how it developed into
an industry by reading this entertaining, anecdotal autobiography by an artists’
manager and independent record company proprietor who has been one of Canada’s
most significant music business movers and shakers since starting out as a
Toronto rock band manager in the 1960s.

Finkelstein was born in Toronto in 1944. His
father was in the RCAF and stayed in the air force after the war, so Finkelstein
grew up as an air force brat moving from base to base, in Canada and overseas.
Usually, the Finkelsteins were the only Jewish family on any particular base.
It was such an unusual event for the son of a Canadian serviceman to celebrate
his bar mitzvah at the synagogue in Nottingham, England, the event made the
front page of the local newspaper.

Back in Toronto by high school time, Finkelstein
dropped out just as the music scene in the downtown Yorkville Village began to
explode. Hanging out in Yorkville clubs, the young entrepreneur was soon
managing Kensington Market and the Paupers, two of Toronto’s most significant
rock bands of the era. By the end of the ‘60s, he had shifted his focus to
managing such singer-songwriters as Murray McLauchlan and Bruce Cockburn – whom
he still manages more than 40 years later, one of the longest-lasting
artist-manager relationships in pop music history – and to establishing True
North Records, which quickly grew to be one of Canada’s most significant
independent record labels. (Finkelstein sold the record company in 2007. Among
the buyers was Ottawa music business veteran Harvey Glatt.)

I should note that I’ve known Finkelstein for
the better part of four decades. Working as a Montreal concert producer, and as
an artists’ agent, in the 1970s and early-‘80s, I occasionally had business
dealings with his company. As a journalist and broadcaster, I’ve interviewed
and written about many of his artists, and Finkelstein and I once served together
on a Juno Awards advisory committee. Reading the book, I smiled at many “oh,
yeah” episodes I knew about, and learned about a lot of things I didn’t.

As he details in the book, Finkelstein was very
much at the centre of the action in establishing a viable music business in
Canada. He was among the industry figures who fought for, and achieved, the
Canadian content regulations, which were essential for opening up the country’s
airwaves to homegrown musicians. Later, when music videos became an important
tool in music marketing, he was instrumental in setting up and chairing
VideoFACT – now Much-FACT – which provides funding for Canadian music
videos and websites.

Much of the book is devoted to anecdotes about
Finkelstein’s many business dealings on behalf of his clients and about many of
the records he released on True North over the years. Among the funniest
stories – although it may not have seemed so at the time – is one about his
having to fight back after client Murray McLauchlan was banned from performing
at the CNE because the talent booker confused him with McLean and McLean, a
brother duo known for their raunchy material.

Although he has wound down much of his
day-to-day involvement in the music business, Finkelstein still keeps his hand
in as Bruce Cockburn’s manager. But, whether it’s fulfilling that role or
acting as a record company chief, what comes through loud and clear in the
memoir is that, throughout his long career, Finkelstein has always been motivated,
first and foremost, by his passion for the music and for the artists who make
it.

More than almost anyone I’ve ever known in the
music business, Bernie Finkelstein has always been a mensch.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

The Ottawa Folk Festival – taking place
this year from Thursday, September 6 through Monday, September 10 – and in its
second year under Bluesfest administration, has announced its initial lineup
and, like last year, it almost looks like there are two distinct festivals
happening. Although there’s some overlap in the audiences, they attract two
very different kinds of crowds.

Getting most of the attention is an
indie-rock headliner-oriented, bluesfesty kind of festival that mostly plays
out on the main stage with some spillover onto the smaller stages. Clearly,
this aspect of the festival is after the younger demographic that wants to
party late into the night. The move into September, when university students are
back in town, is a move to attract more of this crowd – as are such acts as Bon
Iver, Kathleen Edwards, Great Lake Swimmers and Great Big Sea (who
do have have a lot of folk roots in their music).

Then, there’s the traditional folk festival
centred on the smaller stages, and on the daytime workshop stages, with maybe a
bit of spillover onto the main stage. This is the aspect of the festival meant
to attract the kind of people who have been supporting folk festivals for years
and years and decades, who support folk artists and go to folk clubs, who love
the music without regard to what may be hip or popular at a particular moment
in time.

Among the artists I’m most looking forward
to seeing at the Ottawa Folk Festival this year are Red Horse, a trio that
brings together Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky, all three of
whom are superb singer-songwriters. Although I’ve seen all them individually
many times, I’ve not heard them live as a trio yet. The Red Horse album was
great and you can see my review at this link.

The Once from Newfoundland is another group
whose recordings I really like but have not yet had a chance to see live. My
review of their first album is at this link.

One of the main stage performers I am
looking forward to is Amy Helm. Her work as lead singer of Ollabelle and
backing her father, the late Levon Helm, has been great.

Old Man Luedecke – who I wrote about at this link – and Michael Jerome Browne – whose latest album I reviewed at this link – and Corb Lund – whose
latest album I reviewed at this link –are artists I’ve seen many times before, who I always enjoy, and who I
highly recommend.

I was also pleased to see Pat Moore on the
bill. She’s got several fine CDs and is a strong live performer.

Two others acts whose videos I looked at
online and now want to see are Belle Starr and Gordie MacKeeman and his Rhythm
Boys.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Chris Rawlings was one of my favourite
local singer-songwriters when I first started hanging out on the Montreal folk
scene back around 1969. He was then in the early stages of his solo career after
spending a few years as part of a band called Rings and Things. Forty years ago
this fall, when I started my first concert series at Dawson College in
Montreal, Chris headlined my second concert presentation. And when I started
running the Golem Coffee House in 1974, Chris was one of my
frequently-presented artists. Some of the material on this collection of live
tracks and previously unreleased studio recordings dates from those days.

Among the highlights are a couple of
topical songs written from perspective of a Quebec anglophone. “Farewell to
Quebec,” recorded live in Toronto in 1989, is a bittersweet farewell that
captures well the feelings of so many people caught up in great anglo exodus
from Quebec that became a tidal wave in the 1970s and ‘80s (and which still
continues to this day).

And “Hey René,” recorded in 1976, is a
reaction to the election of Quebec’s first separatist government under René Lévesque.
One of the most prophetic lines in the song says, “What will you do when the
contract comes due and the union bosses that supported you want more?” We found
out the answer to that in 1982 when Lévesque and his finance minister, Jacques
Parizeau, rolled back public sector wages by 20% in what was the most draconian
anti-labour legislation in Canadian history.

Other highlights include a 1972 recording
of “House of D,” covered back in the day by Christopher Kearney, a folk-rock song
that reaches out to a teenage girl caught up in a cycle of abuse and detention
and Chris and Paul Lauzon’s dreamy setting of William Butler Yeats’ “Lake Isle
of Innisfree” recorded live in 1998 (but which I remember from back in the
1970s).

I particularly liked hearing Chris’
versions of two of the late Wade Hemsworth’s classic songs. “The Log Driver’s
Waltz,” recorded in 1972, includes harmonies from Wade himself and three original
members of the Mountain City Four: Anna McGarrigle, Peter Weldon and Jack
Nissenson, while the solo version of “The Wild Goose,” recorded at the Wade
Hemsworth Tribute Concert in Montreal in 2002, is beautiful and haunting.

The album ends with a rollicking version of
Chris’ own classic, the tongue-twisting “Pearl River Turnaround” recorded live
at Expo ’86 in Vancouver with fiddler Christophe Obermeir.

Chris precedes “Pearl River Turnaround”
with a song written and sung by Obermeir at Expo ’86 on which Chris backs him
on recorder. As the one track featuring a different lead singer, it interrupts the
flow and unnecessarily throws the album off its Rawlings-track.

About Me

I'm an editor, writer and broadcaster now based in Ottawa who has written about folk and roots music since the 1970s for Sing Out! Magazine and the Montreal Gazette and other Canadian newspapers. My radio show, Folk Roots/Folk Branches, was on CKUT in Montreal from 1994-2007. I'm now one of the rotating hosts of Saturday Morning on CKCU in Ottawa where my programming is based on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches format I developed at CKUT. I'm also one of the occasional co-hosts of Canadian Spaces on CKCU. In the 1970s and ‘80s I ran a folk club, the Golem, and produced most of Montreal’s folk-oriented concerts. I also booked tours for Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Priscilla Herdman, Rosalie Sorrels, Mason Daring & Jeanie Stahl, Bill Staines, Guy Van Duser & Billy Novick and Dakota Dave Hull & Sean Blackburn. In 2014, I was the recipient of the Ottawa Folk Festival's Helen Verger Award for "significant, sustained contributions to folk/roots music in Canada." In 2017, I was one of the inaugural inductees into the Folk DJ Hall of Fame created by Folk Alliance International.